Friday, November 24, 2017

The best meals are created when chefs get to play around and innovate with their ingredients. Chef Leo Asaro at Tico Restaurant in Boston's Back Bay gets to do every once in a while with a special dinner called Leo's Lab, which happen every 2-3 weeks.

For Leo's Lab, guests are seated at the lab kitchen counter, so you can see all the action of Chef Leo Asaro preparing everything. There are only eight seats and only one seating for the night, so it's quite an exclusive experience.

Each Leo's Lab dinner comes with five savory courses, a dessert, and a chef's special cocktail - plus a welcome glass of prosecco for $75. Instead of a server, chef Asaro serves and explains each dish to the guests.

I attended the last dinner, which started with some Bay scallops with autumn berry, pine, and smoked oil
It was near the end of the season for Nantucket bay scallops, and we savored it paired with tart autumn berry sauce.

"Wrapper's Delight" - vegetables wrapped with jamon serrano and mole
The mole took chef Asaro 2-3 days to make and was very rich in flavors. The wrap filling was also accentuated with some rau ram (culantro).

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

At the beginning of this year, I wrote about Loretta's Last Call, a Southern restaurant and live music venue near Fenway. They've recently revamped their menu, reimagining some dishes and adding new items on the menu, so I went back to try out some of these menu items!

The hush puppies had been recreated; now they serve Serrano and roasted corn hush puppies with honey cayenne butter ($8)
It's not that spicy but it has a nice kick, especially with the honey cayenne butter!

Another new appetizer was the Crispy pork belly with wild mushroom grit cakes & a cider reduction ($12)
My favorite part was actually the mushroom grit cakes, but the pork belly had a nice sweet glaze to it, as well - I just wish it was crispier considering the name of the dish!

Sunday, April 17, 2016

The popular South End spot, The Gallows, recently held their first family-style Pig Roast on April 4. The event was successful so hopefully we will see more of it!
This was actually my first time at The Gallows, and I like the themed decorations like the ouija board on the wall.

The Pig Roast was $30 per person for a lot of great food, as you will see shortly!

When we got seated, we were served popcorn. First I thought it was bacon caramel popcorn, but even better - it was popcorn with cracklings! I kind of just went for the cracklings.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

I can't find any Indonesian restaurant in Boston. But at least, there is an Indonesian pop-up called Kaki Lima, put on by Chef Retno Pratiwi who is Indonesian and is serving authentic Indonesian food. Before, her pop-up only happen a couple nights here and there and consists of a prix-fixe menu, but she recently started serving her Indonesian cooking at KO Pies at The Shipyard in East Boston on Monday and Tuesday nights, with an a la carte menu.

That made it much easier for me to go and try her food! I dragged a friend of mine to The Shipyard, a rather suspicious drive to storage and warehouses ("did you bring me here to kill me?") but we finally saw KO Pies.

I started with some Siomay Bandung ($8). The steamed dumplings here are made with shrimp and served with the signature Indonesian peanut sauce and kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)

The dumplings are a bit small for $8 for 4 pieces but the flavors are spot on!

Monday, April 20, 2015

Neptune Oyster is a small seafood restaurant in the North End, and one of the most popular in town. If you don't get there early enough, waits can go up to over an hour! Luckily, we came pretty early and got seated before too long.

Since the place is called Neptune Oyster, we obviously had to start with some oysters. They have one of the bigger selections in town. This time, we tried 4 different oysters from the area: Katama Bay (Edgartown, MA), Thatch Island (Barnstable, MA), Browne's Point (Damariscotta, ME), and Summerside (Bedeque Bay, PEI)

Everything was extremely fresh - I think I liked the Summerside the best from this batch.

Neptune is famous for their lobster roll: Maine Lobster roll, hot with butter ($27)

It's one of the most expensive in the city, but also one of the best. It's served on a buttery brioche bun, and the lobster is soaked in hot butter. It's so rich, the bread gets drenched and the roll becomes messy, but you won't care as you devour it.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Club Passim, the long-time folk music venue and nonprofit
that’s been supporting the local arts community in Cambridge for many years,
have finally launched an in-house food program. They’d been lucky to snag Chef
Brandon Arms to head this new kitchen. Until recently, Chef Arms headed the
kitchen at Garden at the Cellar in Cambridge.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the food they are
offering. The food wasn’t just “really good for a live music venue”, it was
actually really good in its own right. The menu items aren’t just your typical
pub/bar fare, but Chef Brandon has created some fun, creative dishes that are
rather ambitious for a venue like this.

We started off with some Roasted brussels sprouts, country
ham, egg yolk puree, crispy potato ($7)

The brussels sprouts they used were smaller than usual, but a perfect bite size! I've never had them with egg yolk before, but this was a great alternative take on brussels sprouts.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

I finally tried Ten Tables in Cambridge, an outpost of the original in Jamaica Plain. It's a popular place - the cozy, dimly lit restaurant was completely packed and it wasn't even a weekend night. As with most other restaurants, they serve locally sourced ingredients, but instead of a hip, modern direction, they went with the comfortable, neighborhood feel.

We went with the tasting menu instead of ordering a la carte, which is $55 for 4 courses.

We started with a tile fish rillette

Followed by Oyster with kombu seaweed, apple, vanilla foam

I liked this surprising dish. I don't normally associate oyster with a creamy broth and vanilla aroma, but after my initial suprise I really enjoyed how the flavors worked together.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Trying to find all the best restaurants in Boston, I jumped at a Gilt City deal for a tasting menu at Ribelle in Brookline. Ribelle is a small restaurant by chef Tim Maslow, a Momofuku alum. By the way, if you've never bought any voucher from Gilt City, you can get 25% off your first purchase using this link.

While waiting for my friends to arrive, I spent time at the bar with the Hip Replacement (Laphroaig, lime, salt, burnt cinnamon, $13), a nice cocktail with plenty of the components I like: smoke and citrus.

Our dinner started strong with some South Bay Blonde oysters with shiso ice. I'm really digging the briny East Coast oysters and these sweet oysters from Cape Cod are no exception.

We had a wonderful salad of Macoun apples, stracciatella, mustard frill, nori.

I can't think of a time I've had apples better and sweeter than these so I had to look them up. The macoun apple is a Fall fruit (yes, I'm behind on blogging and I had this meal in the fall) and is known to be especially sweet and juicy. It really was sweet and paired so well with the creaminess of the stracciatella.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

I tried East by Northeast in Inman Square not too long ago, but it seems I already have to say goodbye. The restaurant will close on March 8 (they invite you to come in and have drinks and they will send out food until they run out, according to Eater).

East by Northeast says they serve contemporary Chinese cuisine, but their menu is actually more diverse than that. This small restaurant has often been named one of the best restaurants in Boston.
I had a pretty good meal there, starting with the Braised lamb bun, sesame peppercorn sauce, broccoli rabe, pickled golden beets ($5 each)

This is a nice change from the typical pork belly buns. I actually prefer the texture of the lamb better and the sauce was quite flavorful. Th pickles added a nice texture contrast and cleanses your palate for the next bite. Overall a great bun.